[Tex/LaTex] How to find the names of the panels in a beamer color theme and change their colors

beamercolor

The Beamer manual (17.2.3 Setting Beamer’s Colors) shows how to set colors of specific parts of the color theme using \setbeamercolor. However, since many different color themes have different named parts, how can one find out the name of the part (panel for example) in order to change its color?

For example:

\documentclass[xcolor=dvipsnames]{beamer}

\title[XYZ]{Xblah Yblah Zblah}
\author{Prof Smarty Pantsson}

\date{End.Of.TheWorld,\\Base, Moon} 

\usetheme{PaloAlto}
\usecolortheme{seahorse}
\useinnertheme{rectangles}

\definecolor{logoBlue}{HTML}{003278}
\definecolor{blueDark}{HTML}{a3b6d4}
\definecolor{blueLight}{HTML}{e7eef8}
\definecolor{grey}{HTML}{b1b5b8}

\setbeamercolor*{palette tertiary}{bg=blueDark}
\setbeamercolor{frametitle}{fg=black,bg=blueLight}
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=black,bg=white}

\usefonttheme{serif}

\begin{document}

\frame{\titlepage}

\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{Frame title}

  \begin{itemize}
    \item Text Text Text Text Text Text
    \item Text Text Text Text Text Text
  \end{itemize}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

this changes the title panel of the seahorse color theme:

However, I can't find the names of the other panels (side panel and the square in the upper left corner) in the Beamer manual.

What are the names of the other panels in the seahorse color theme?

How can I find the similar names in any beamer color theme?

Best Answer

Try & error

If one has no clue what the name of a specific colour is, there are some likely colours which are worth a try. You found the first one yourself, the palette tertiary. Besides this colour also try palette secondary and palette primary. These three colours define most elements of a colour theme.

Finding likely names

But for some things one just has to give the correct name, e.g. for the sidebar. To find out possible names to try until one finds the correct name, I recommend http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~masson/latex/Beamer-appearance-cheat-sheet.pdf which nicely summarises the most important names.

Never forget

To also change the colour structure. Basically all colours of the theme are based on various shades of this colour. If you change this one as well, you are save to not having forget any colour to change. (You blueDark seems not dark enough to use it for elements like bullet points, so I mixed a bit black into it)

\documentclass[xcolor=dvipsnames]{beamer}

\title[XYZ]{Xblah Yblah Zblah}
\author{Prof Smarty Pantsson}

\date{End.Of.TheWorld,\\Base, Moon} 

\usetheme{PaloAlto}
\usecolortheme{seahorse}
\useinnertheme{rectangles}

\definecolor{logoBlue}{HTML}{003278}
\definecolor{blueDark}{HTML}{a3b6d4}
\definecolor{blueLight}{HTML}{e7eef8}
\definecolor{grey}{HTML}{b1b5b8}

\setbeamercolor*{palette tertiary}{bg=blueDark}
\setbeamercolor{frametitle}{fg=black,bg=blueLight}
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=black,bg=white}

\setbeamercolor*{palette primary}{bg=blueDark}
\setbeamercolor*{palette secondary}{bg=blueDark}
\setbeamercolor*{sidebar}{bg=blueLight}
\setbeamercolor*{structure}{fg=blueDark!60!black}

\usefonttheme{serif}

\begin{document}

\frame{\titlepage}

\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{Frame title}

  \begin{itemize}
    \item Text Text Text Text Text Text
    \item Text Text Text Text Text Text
  \end{itemize}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to use beamer colors in beamerarticle

Having just wanted to do this in answer to another question, I can tell you that this is Not Intended To Be Done! A lot of the theming and colour commands are simply set to "do nothing" when the article version of beamer is used. However, using a bit of trickery we can reload the commands and so make the colours available. This should be used with Extreme Caution as it might break something that I haven't tested (which is about everything).

Here's a picture based on a slightly modified version of your example:

beamer colours in article mode

And here's the code:

\documentclass{standalone}
%\url{http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/22768/86}
\PassOptionsToPackage{svgnames}{xcolor}
\usepackage{beamerarticle}
\usepackage{tikz}

\makeatletter

\def\beamer@currentmode{beamer}
\def\beamer@colorhook{}
\newskip\beamer@lastskip
\let\beamercolorbox=\relax
\let\endbeamercolorbox=\relax
\let\usetheme=\relax
\let\usecolortheme=\relax
\let\usefonttheme=\relax
\let\useoutertheme=\relax
\let\useinnertheme=\relax

\input{beamerbasethemes.sty}
\input{beamerbasecolor.sty}
\usecolortheme{default}
\usecolortheme{beaver}
\makeatother

\setbeamercolor{example text}{bg=Maroon}

\begin{document}

This is some text outside any frame.

\begin{frame}{Frame}
\begin{alertblock}{Block}
\usebeamercolor{example text}%
\begin{tikzpicture}
\filldraw[color=fg, fill=bg!50!white] (0,0) rectangle (5,3);
\draw[line width=5mm] (1,1)--(2,2);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{alertblock}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

The main part is the stuff between \makeatletter and \makeatother. We need to load in the beamer colour management. Unfortunately, the file containing the commands checks the mode and skips most stuff in article mode. So we need to temporarily change to beamer mode to persuade it that we really do want to define this stuff. But as the files have already been read in (via the \usepackage{beamerarticle}) we can't \usepackage them again but have to \input them (this produces a couple of warnings in the log, but ignore them). We load in the themes set and the color set. There are a couple of things that are defined in beamer.cls that these depend on so we have to set them up: \beamer@colorhook and \beamer@lastskip. Also, some things are defined by \newcommand and were defined (to the wrong things) on the first read. So we need to set them all to \relax to avoid errors. After that, it's plain sailing!

[Tex/LaTex] Customize colors in beamer Madrid theme

You have to dig into the Madrid theme in order to see what it sets for the colours. Looking at beamerthemeMadrid.sty, we see it uses the following additional themes:

\usecolortheme{whale}
\usecolortheme{orchid}
\useinnertheme[shadow]{rounded}
\useoutertheme{infolines}

While one might think the colours are defined in beamercolorthemewhale.sty and beamercolorthemeorchid.sty, this is only partially true. Let's look at the construction of the footline in beamerouterthemeinfolines.sty:

\setbeamercolor*{author in head/foot}{parent=palette tertiary}
\setbeamercolor*{title in head/foot}{parent=palette secondary}
\setbeamercolor*{date in head/foot}{parent=palette primary}

\defbeamertemplate*{footline}{infolines theme}
{
  \leavevmode%
  \hbox{%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=.333333\paperwidth,ht=2.25ex,dp=1ex,center]{author in head/foot}%
    \usebeamerfont{author in head/foot}\insertshortauthor\expandafter\beamer@ifempty\expandafter{\beamer@shortinstitute}{}{~~(\insertshortinstitute)}
  \end{beamercolorbox}%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=.333333\paperwidth,ht=2.25ex,dp=1ex,center]{title in head/foot}%
    \usebeamerfont{title in head/foot}\insertshorttitle
  \end{beamercolorbox}%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=.333333\paperwidth,ht=2.25ex,dp=1ex,right]{date in head/foot}%
    \usebeamerfont{date in head/foot}\insertshortdate{}\hspace*{2em}
    \insertframenumber{} / \inserttotalframenumber\hspace*{2ex} 
  \end{beamercolorbox}}%
  \vskip0pt%
}

It seems to construct 3 boxes with the left using colour author in head/foot (parent=palette tertiary), the centre using colour title in head/foot (parent=palette secondary) and the right using colour date in head/foot (parent=palette primary). So, change the aforementioned colours.

I'd rather suggest changing the base colour, and letting the other theme colours follow relative to it. For example, change beamer@blendedblue:

enter image description here

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usetheme{Madrid}

% Change base colour beamer@blendedblue (originally RGB: 0.2,0.2,0.7)
\colorlet{beamer@blendedblue}{green!40!black}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}{Frame title}
  This is some frame content
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to use beamer colors in beamerarticle

[Tex/LaTex] Customize colors in beamer Madrid theme

Related Question